I don't think that hiring people to get outside knowledge is that useful in IT.
From what I understand there is no such other occupation that is sharing so much information between people. You have blogs, loads of free and paid materials, you have loads of conferences where you can send your staff to see "how others are doing it".
Other thing that I often see ... a lot of developers really invest in "outside knowledge" and common problem in dev teams is building stuff with new shiny tech or in a new way they saw on the conference.
From what I understand there is no such other occupation that is sharing so much information between people. You have blogs, loads of free and paid materials, you have loads of conferences where you can send your staff to see "how others are doing it".
Other thing that I often see ... a lot of developers really invest in "outside knowledge" and common problem in dev teams is building stuff with new shiny tech or in a new way they saw on the conference.